After working our way through several UK garage #1s, of varying quality, we arrive at the ultimate early-noughties garage anthem…
Gotta Get Thru This, by Daniel Bedingfield (his 1st of three #1s)
2 weeks, from 2nd – 16th December 2001 / 1 week, from 6th – 13th January 2002 (3 weeks total)
That feels like a controversial statement, because garage is a genre of the streets, for young, black kids; whereas Daniel Bedingfield always seemed very white and very middle-class. And he isn’t even British! He’s a Kiwi. Maybe the fact that I’m classing this as the ‘ultimate early-noughties garage anthem’ shows how middle-aged and middle-class I am…
But that’s fine, because it’s a good song. And it still, surprisingly, feels fresh. It blends the garage beats with some nice dance touches, and a big pop sensibility. It’s not confronting, it’s not annoying – unlike some earlier garage chart-toppers – but it doesn’t lose its credibility. (Though, the spelling of ‘through’ as ‘thru’ in the title does come off as trying a little too hard to be ‘with it’.)
My main complaint with 2-step, garage songs is that the beat can be too light, too lacking in oomph. Bedingfield recorded this in his bedroom, using a mic and his PC, and pressed a few early copies which he sent out to DJs. For the label release, D’N’D Productions helped with remixing, and I’m not sure how responsible they were for the beefed up, poppier feel that this has compared to the earlier garage #1s.
‘Gotta Get Thru This’ is also refreshingly short, coming in at well under three minutes, which is another thing that makes it feel very modern. At 2:42, it is the shortest #1 since Robson & Jerome’s ‘I Believe’. And if we (happily) ignore that record’s existence, it is the shortest, semi-relevant chart-topper since Kylie’s ‘Tears on My Pillow’ twelve years before.
Perhaps another aspect of my reluctance to crown Daniel Bedingfield as champion of UK garage is that this record, his debut, wasn’t totally representative of his ‘sound’. His two further number ones are a lot more middle-of-the-road, a lot more mum-friendly (though this is certainly as mum-friendly as garage ever got). He released an impressive six singles – in a variety of genres – from his first album, across almost two years, and five of them made the Top 10.
Another noteworthy thing here is that when ‘Gotta Get Thru This’ returned to the top in the second week of January 2002, it did so with the lowest-ever sales for a number one single (around 25,500 copies). That was a sign of things to come, as the CD-single boom came to a rapid end, and is a record that will be ‘bettered’ by thirteen further #1s between now and 2008, when downloads eventually started to overtake physical sales.
The UK Number Ones Blog 
Wait, is this guy the brother of Natasha Bedingfield? I love “Unwritten”.
I’m Australian so naturally an act from our little brother country I should know since every popular Kiwi is claimed by us as Australian – Keith Urban, Karl Urban, Neil Finn of Crowded House, Russell Crowe, Kimbra, Lorde – but I don’t know who this guy is. Hearing the song, looks like I don’t need to feel bad about not knowing him because I didn’t like it at all. This spent 3 weeks at No. 1? Man, this garage sound, I really do not like it. It’s not horrible and there are some good songs but it’s not really that pleasing to my ears. I don’t really like grime music either, or tbh, most UK hip hop from what I’ve heard (no offence, but a lot of it sounds very corny to me, maybe it’s hearing rapping with those accents).
Yes, very much brother of Natasha, and probably the bigger star of the two, in the UK at least. They remain the only (I think) brother and sister to have both topped the British charts. And speaking of antipodeans, there’s an unexpected Australian icon coming up in my next post!
The first garage chart-topper that I rated, a great beat, good song sung well and an exciting bpm, and not in any way annoying and novelty-sounding. A proper pop record, and it still sounds great – unlike his bland mumsie ballads beloved, I would guess, of his subsequent fanbase as opposed to dance music fans. I was really disappointed this was a one-off. In terms of street-cred, over-rated, it doesn’t matter where a music genre starts, they all cross-pollinate and feed later genres and nobody owns a copyright on inventing a style of music – TBH most people benefit when one breaks through into popular global culture, not least the early pioneers do in Music History references and sampling/covers. Much better than being an obscure footnote to a forgotten genre!
I remember the follow up, ‘James Dean’, was also upbeat, more dance than garage. But then the ballads that followed were a slog… Plenty of time to discuss them when the top the charts 😦
I’ve never heard this song before. I like the beat but the rest of the song seems a let down. Sentimental love lyrics don’t really fit the beat at all, which I don’t find light at all. More intense and cynical lyrics would be more appropriate in this case, in my view.
Maolsheachlann
I read the lyrics as ‘having withdrawal symptoms for love’, so fairly intense, I’d say.
OMG I love Gotta Get Thru This! SO CATCHY. I still get this in my head twenty-odd years later. I remember hearing this one on the radio here in the US a few times. 🙂
I still have the album this is from, though it’s been YEARS since I listened to it. The accompanying album was also really good. In addition to Gotta Get Thru This, I loved Friday, James Dean, and even If You’re Not the One, which I always have a bit of a soft spot for. It was “our song” with my boyfriend and I at the time.
I’m interested to hear If You’re Not the One again when it comes up as a number one, as it was huge at the time but not one you hear very often today. I didn’t much care for it in 2002, but then I was a too cool for school 16/17 year old…
When you said garage….I was thinking a raw guitar song…so I guess this is a different garage than the one I was in lol.